Flat Tyre

It's not at all uncommon to have a puncture (flat tyre) here. We've probably had at least eight in the two years we've been here. The roads are terrible and tyres take a lot of abuse. The last half mile to St. Monica's is unpaved. There is a trash heap beside the road where the entire neighbourhood deposits their trash. At times it covers almost half of the road. Occasionally someone lights it to burn as much as possible. Once or twice a year a road grader comes along and levels it spreading the trash into the road for all to walk and drive over.

Wednesday I needed to dash to town between classes to run a couple of errands. Well, I wasn't able to exactly dash because I had a puncture. Years ago my father was very wise. He wouldn't let us drive by ourselves until we had proved that we could change the tyre. I don't think I've ever had to change one since then but I proved once again that I can do it.

Many of the teachers had gone to a funeral of one of our student's parent so there weren't many male teachers around that afternoon to ask for help. So, I changed it by myself. I got the car jacked up but didn't think I was going to be able to get the lug nuts off. I struggled and after several attempts got them off. (John later said it looked like that tyre hadn't been changed in years.)

By that time, Mr. Okello had gone to the restroom by the parking area. He saw what I was doing and came over to investigate. He had never changed a tyre before and didn't know how to go about doing it but offered to help. After watching for a couple of minutes he helped me jack the car a little higher in order to get the tyre off and then put on the new one. I still did most of the work.

Okello is a humourous man. He'll say something he thinks is funny and just laugh and laugh at his own joke. He was so excited and tickled to learn how to change a tyre he was laughing away. I doubt there has ever been a person who was so excited to change a tyre before!

There were two nails in the tyre that had caused the puncture. I'm guessing they came from the recently leveled trash heap. Okello was thrilled to learn how to change a tyre and I appreciated the help.